Simon Easterby: 'One result against England doesn't give us the right to sit back and enjoy it'
Assistant coach Simon Easterby. Pic: INPHO/Grace Halton
Simon Easterby has warned that Ireland’s emphatic win over England last Saturday doesn’t entitle the team to sit back and admire their handiwork.
The 42-21 win in Twickenham has completely changed the debate around Andy Farrell’s side. Gone are the deep dives on the age profile and the perceived decline of the Irish conveyor belt. In its place now is wonderment and giddiness.
All very welcome, obviously, but there are still two Six Nations games to play before the squad reverts to its four component provinces and Easterby, Ireland’s defence coach, has let it be known that there will be no dialling things back now.
“I guess one result against England in Twickenham, it doesn't give us the right to sit back and reflect and enjoy that, because you know you've got another game coming up against Wales who performed really well against Scotland.
“Our philosophy has always been to be really diligent around the fundamentals in our game and make sure that we keep honing those skills and keep mastering those skills in training to allow us to keep performing and we'll need to get better again next week.
“It's a different game, it's a different team that we're playing against. They've got different skill set and they've got different threats to England. We need to make sure we stay on top of that.”
Ireland’s win against the old enemy came amid rumours of a potential switch to Saracens for Farrell after next year’s World Cup after over a decade of involvement with the Ireland Test team. Easterby was inevitably asked how that has been raised among the staff.
“Yeah, we haven't.” Short and sweet.
Not so sweet was the update on James Lowe who went off injured early on in London. His Six Nations is over.
“Yes, he's struggling. I think he's due to see someone today, just a specialist. I would have thought they'd make a call on it over the next few days, but you could see when he tried to take off that he did something nasty.
"Lowey's pretty tough. He was getting up and down on the sideline when things were going well for us and he was part of the cheerleading group on the sideline. The next couple of days will probably be reflected on his involvement before the end of the Six Nations.”
As for that defeat of England, it doesn’t change much about what Ireland are doing, he said. Yes, that one was sweet, but life goes on.
“We're pretty realistic in that we weren't as bad as people were saying we were against France, even though we let ourselves down in a few areas, but then you're not always as good as people think you are as well.”
It was all far more measured than that Irish coach’s box in London last weekend when Farrell led the celebrations, roaring his delight and punching his fist at times when Ireland scored a try or made a big defensive stop.
Easterby was talking minutes after the team’s open session in front of 4,999 fans at the Aviva Stadium where they trained against Andrew Browne’s U20s equivalent in what is the first and only ‘down week’ of this Championship.
England will seem a long time ago by the time Wales come to Dublin next Friday week. For now, there is still some breathing space in which to digest that round three win and compare it to other famous Irish victories of recent vintage.
“We felt like we hadn’t been ourselves against France,” said the former Ireland captain. “We’d done pretty well against Italy but we felt there was more in us, and there is some sense of going to Twickenham… It’s a massive game, it’s not a place where you get a result easily, you have to work for it.
“The players showed that and showed how much it meant to them, to play in an Irish jersey. They wanted to perform and that was reflected in the way that they played, the way that they went after England and the way that they looked after each other, the way that they celebrated. It will be right up there for me in terms of performances.”
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